Chevrier reviews the season

Denis Chevrier, the Renault F1 Team's engine race engineering boss, casts
an eye back over the 2006 season -- and explains the challenges faced by
the new V8 engines this season.
Q: Denis, what are your strongest memories of 2006?
Denis ...

Denis Chevrier, the Renault F1 Team's engine race engineering boss, casts
an eye back over the 2006 season -- and explains the challenges faced by
the new V8 engines this season.

Q: Denis, what are your strongest memories of 2006?

Denis Chevrier: In all the time since I have been working in F1,
I have rarely lived through such a tough, fascinating and demanding
season. The tenacity of our rivals forced us to push ourselves to the
limit all the way through the championship. Trying to beat Ferrari isn't
really like beating any other team...

Q: What is your best memory of the year?

DC: Without a doubt, the opening laps in Hungary, in the wet.
Fernando gave a master class in driving an F1 car, and the only
comparison I could find was with Ayrton Senna at Donington in 1993. It
was an exceptional performance, he was on another planet. Even in the
midst of the race, it felt like we should have been applauding this
virtuoso drive.

Q: And the worst?

DC: When I saw smoke coming from Fernando's car in Monza.
Initially, I was stunned. You watch the TV images, you scan the
telemetry... and you suddenly realise that it's not a dream, that it has
happened. Immediately, you need to react, to try and understand why the
engine failed, to work out how to get the engine back to the factory as
quickly as possible... It only took a few seconds before we went into
'crisis mode'.

Q: Rob White admitted that the failure led to the team working night and
day...

DC: That's exactly how it was. The calendar gave us a fortnight
to react, given that the next race was in China in three weeks' time.
From that moment, the whole company was mobilised to understand what
had happened, to find suitable solutions, to approve them, and then
to decide which option to take. No part of the company was spared:
suppliers, the design office, the production team, our R&D specialists,
the dyno team, the assembly workshop... At dawn, we were inspecting
parts that had been tested through the night...

Q: What general assessment can you make of the first season with V8
engines?

DC: The cars were clearly under-powered relative to the level
of grip they had. That made life very tough for the engines this year,
and much more severe than it had been for the V10s. The period of time
spent at full throttle jumped significantly, the demands on the engine
were much greater and all the engine manufacturers did a fantastic job
to meet the challenge of the new rules. The V8s are wonderful engines.
They were running at or near 20,000 rpm and you couldn't afford even the
smallest lapse...